Ways To Win Texas Hold Em

Play Some Hands. This one can be tough for some of my fellow Americans unless you live in New. Daniel Negreanu gives us a bit of strategy on Texas Hold'em in this 3 part video series. Very good lesson for seasoned poker players Part 1 of 3 - How to Win at Texas Hold'em with Daniel Negreanu.

• How To Win Texas Hold'em Tournaments
• Texas Holdem Tips On Winning
• Texas Hold Em Win Order

Brush up on your Poker Tournament Strategy and Preparation before you start

As a recreational player, my poker tournaments start well before the tournament director yells out “shuffle up and deal.” I put thought into my morning routine, what I’m going to wear, what food I am going to bring, and when I am going to arrive at the tournament venue. Part of my motivation for preparing is purely based on anticipation — I only get a few shots a year to participate in a live poker tournament, so I better make the most of them and have my head well focused on my poker tournament strategy. But I also believe that preparing helps me reach a strong mental state for playing.

The following list includes five steps I always try to take when preparing to play a tournament, all of which are designed to help me ready myself to give it my best when opportunities to play arise.

1. Play Some Hands

This one can be tough for some of my fellow Americans unless you live in New Jersey or Nevada and can hop online, or if there are nightly tournaments available to you at local poker rooms. But if you can find a way to get in some hands before playing a tournament, it’s worth doing so.

When in New Jersey, I’ll sometimes play a few small tournaments on WSOP.com before heading over to the Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania for a live event. Even though online poker isn’t quite the same as live, playing it allows me to get into tournament mode. Patience is very important in tournaments, and the pace slows down even more in a live setting, making it very important to stay in the moment and remain focused.

How To Win Texas Hold'em Tournaments

Even playing in a quick nightly poker tournament can help, because while the structure is likely to be terrible, you can work on your “push-fold” strategy with a shallow stack. Knowing when to reraise-shove or call off when you have less than 20 big blinds is crucial in tournaments, and sometimes the best way to learn is to put yourself into awkward spots. Nightly tournaments, where everybody often has a very small stack relative to the blinds, are terrific for getting into tough spots.

2. Listen to Podcasts / Watch Videos

A few years back I discovered the Thinking Poker Podcast hosted by Nate Meyvis and Andrew Brokos, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Each episode has a strategy segment where the duo breaks down a specific hand or a concept, but even in their feature interviews there’s often talk of more general strategies that can be employed at the poker table. Listening to this podcast really makes you think about different ways to approach hands. In fact, I’ve never heard Meyvis or Brokos use the word “standard” when talking about a hand.

If you’re not a podcast fan, then search the web for video content on multi-table tournaments. There are several sites that offer quality strategy videos, and even if it’s the most basic content, going out of your way to think about poker will help you prepare for the many decisions you’re going to have to make at the tables.

3. Get Rest

During the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, Phil Ivey barely slept. Each day, after grinding the Main Event for several hours, he left the Rio and headed to the Bellagio to play in a giant mixed game with an unknown businessman rumored to be from France. Even when Ivey reached the November Nine that year, he was quick to get back to Bobby’s Room afterward in order to gamble it up.

This isn’t an optimal strategy, and unless you find yourself in the craziest cash game in the world where a player is shipping blind every hand, go to bed. Being well-rested will help you focus the next day and give you the energy you need to build castles at the table. It will also save you from pumping your body full of artificial sugars and crap by drinking a dozen cups of coffee or Red Bulls.

I make it a high priority to get a good night’s rest before playing an event. I also often try to arrive and register early if I can to make sure I don’t get stuck at a late registration table with a bunch of wizards.

4. Bring Food

Bringing food to a poker tournament benefits me in two ways. First, I always have something to eat if I am hungry, and I try to make it something healthy. Granola bars and nuts are quick pick-me-ups that oftentimes have good amounts of protein as well. I’ll make up a bowl of chicken salad or something else that I can store in a small Tupperware box and take along. This will provide me with a nice meal during the tournament and keep me away from the greasy snack bar.

Second, when I take food, it makes me feel like I am going to be in that poker room all day. Sure, I could run middle set into top set during my first orbit and hit the rail — that happens sometimes. But I know going into the day that I am prepared for a long, successful grind… and I know that when I do, I won’t go hungry!

5. Dress to Impress

Finally, I think that players should focus on the way they dress. Comfort is very important, so it’s smart to bring a sweatshirt or a sweater in case it is cold. But I also think style can have an effect on your opponents as well. In my experience, I believe players react to me differently based upon the way I dress. If I am in a hoodie and headphones — that is, if I appear to be in “grind mode” — then people will assume that I am there purely to profit and will peg me as an aggressive player. On the contrary, when I wear a button-up shirt or something more casual, players are more likely to engage with me and perhaps give away some of their secrets.

I believe that talking with neighbors in between hands can unearth crucial information for the future. You tend to play the most hands with the people sitting next to you because of the relation to the button and blinds, which can make being open and social with your nearest neighbors a useful strategy. For that reason I’ll often go with a more casual style of dress, advertising that I am not just there to profit but to have a good time as well.

Consider these tips when preparing to play your next poker tournament in order to give yourself a better chance to succeed.

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As a poker beginner, you might be already envisioning the money made when you look down at your cards and see pocket aces. While it is true that AA will win more often than not, you still need to understand you will not win every time. So how often can you expect to win with aces?

Pocket aces win 85% of the time against one opponent holding the random hand in Texas Holdem. Although the percentage varies greatly depending on the opponent’s hand and the number of opponents. 85% is the odds to win when AA goes all-in preflop. Odds change on later streets.

It might feel unfair when we loose holding the best hand but keep in mind if we are not 100% to win, we will lose sometimes.

Chances of winning with pocket aces preflop

Every time you get dealt a hand in Texas Holdem your odds of getting pocket aces are 1/221, which is roughly 0.9%.

First, let’s check how often do pocket aces win preflop. For better representation, I will take a sample of 100 examples. So next 100 times you receive an AA, 15 times you will lose and win 85 times.

We should not forget about variance. If we experience negative variance (if we are unlucky), then we may lose 30 times and win 70 times only. On the other hand, if we get a positive side of variance (if we are lucky), we could win 95 out of 100 times!

Pocket aces odds for winning when all-in preflop change depending on which hand we are up against. See how well does AA against specific hands in terms of poker percentages (chance to win). For new players to poker, let me elaborate on the table below.

• 72o means any combination of 7 and 2, o after means the hand is off-suit (meaning that suits on 7 and 2 don’t match)
• 22+ means any pocket pair of 2 and higher (which is all pocket pairs from 22 to and including AA)
• T+ means any card T and higher (T, J, Q, K, A)
• JTs stands for JT suites, which means that suits of J and T match
• broadway hands are the hands that include any combination of hands where the lowest card is T or higher (TQ, TJ, AA, KK, TT, AT)

The best hand against aces preflop is 76s or 87s. They both win 22.5% of the time, so still a big underdog, but it is the best you can hope for.

How odds change against more players

The odds of winning reduce if more players are involved in the hand. Against two opponents holding random hands, AA wins 73.5% of the time. Against three, the odds of winning are now merely 64%.

The tool I am using to show you the % is called Equilab. And you can download it for free from Pokerstrategy’s website. Click on Poker Tools in the menu, the software and scroll down to the end where it says Free training software. Make sure you download the one for Hold’em (it’s written only Equilab).

Chances of winning with AA on later streets

In poker, there is more than just preflop. We know four streets. Those are preflop, flop, turn, and river. It’s easy to calculate your odds to win preflop. When it comes to postflop, things start to get more complex. There are many possible flops. In fact 22100 possible flops. Now some of those could be grouped, but that would still leave us with 1755 different scenarios of flops. On turn and river, that number only increases.

So I can’t show you the pocket aces win percentage against those. But I encourage you to download yourself Equilab I linked to above and play around with different flops, turns, and rivers. As a general rule of thumb, more players, the more cautious you need to be. It will be more likely at least one player has something good.

Chances of winning pre-flop with other hands

Pocket aces are the strongest hand in poker. But we shouldn’t ignore others. The second strongest hand in Hold’em are pocket kings followed by pocket queens.

Chances to win with pocket kings

From the table, we can notice that equity (% to win) with KK against random hand preflop is a bit different for some cards and pretty much the same for others. The biggest difference comes from broadway hands and 22+. The difference is because 22+ and broadways also include AA and that crushes us (AA is 82% to win against KK).

KK has 78.5% chance to win preflop against a random hand. So if our opponent holds a random hand they will still win roughly 1 out of five times. 21.5% of the time to be exact.

Important note. In scenarios above for AA and KK, where I compared them to random holding, I assumed the opponent has a random hand he is willing to go all-in with preflop. In real poker games, opponents will not be going all-in with random hands.

Lets now check the case for QQ

Same as for KK our equity with QQ now falls lower, when we are up against broadway hands and pocket pairs.

Lastly let’s check how we do against those hands with AK as many players like to overplay AK.

Many beginner players are shocked when they see how poorly AK does. That’swhere seasoned poker players will make a lot of money from beginners. Any experienced player knows newbie often overplays hands that look nice but don’t do that good against stronger holdings. With QQ our equity was a lot higher for all of the scenarios. Even against the worst combination of 72o, AK is supposed to win only 2 out of 3 times. This means you will lose 32 times and win 62 times. And that is if you run just average. And this if there would be no variance involved.

Texas Holdem Tips On Winning

I will go deeper into the strategy in another article as it is a massive topic on its own. For now, know when the opponent goes all-in preflop, he will have a decent hand unless they are aggressive players willing to bluff their stack. While some players play tighter (they don’t play many hands) than others a good rule of thumb is pocket kings and aces are always strong enough to get all the money in the middle preflop. With QQ we should be good against the majority, but the tightest people. When it comes to AK, it depends on the opponent we are up against. Often it comes down to personal playing style. I prefer to play my AK a bit more passively, and I will not be blindly throwing my stack in the middle to gamble for what is around 50% to win against what opponent wants to go with all-in.

Conclusion

While pocket aces are a definite favorite against any other hand preflop, it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to win. Odds change significantly if more players are involved, but at the end of the day, if we get all the money in preflop, we should be happy. In the worst-case scenario, we will have 77.5% to win. When we have either KK or QQ we should still do good. But with AK we need to start being cautiouspreflop.

Related Links

Texas Hold Em Win Order

• Ace King vs Pocket Jacks: Winrate and Examples
  
• Odds of Winning With Pocket Kings: Including the Winrate